


Smile for the Crowd

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Ice Skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 15:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: Kissing Clarke was decidedly not in their choreography. Not that Bellamy was surprised it happened. It's the Olympics; emotions are running high. What does surprise him is Clarke's reaction.





	Smile for the Crowd

**Author's Note:**

> As seen on [tumblr](http://katchyalater.tumblr.com)

“So,” says Clarke, tone mild, the second they get backstage and off-camera. “What the hell was that?”

Bellamy pauses in unlacing his skates to toss her a rakish grin, the one he’s practiced his whole life to play up his persona for a crowd. Clarke has always been able to see through it. Until now, he hopes.

“Seizing an opportunity?” He suggests, shrugging.

Clarke’s brow furrows as she pulls thick, warm socks up over her feet. She’s still in her costume– a provocative red number that leaves far too much skin exposed for his sanity– and hasn’t made any moves to change that, which could really start being a problem for him here in a minute.

“What opportunity, exactly?” She asks.

Bellamy doesn’t have a good answer to that question.

This isn’t the first time he’s kissed his partner on the ice. One of the aspects of their dynamic they play up as much as possible is the chemistry between them, coreographing moves that are as provocative as they are technically difficult, drawing audiences into their routines with a romance they can root for. 

But this is the Olympics. And that kiss was definitely _not_  part of the plan.

He hadn’t intended to do it. Not really. But he’d thought about it. With Clarke’s knee hitched over his, her hand in his hair, the way she leaned into the dip, trusting implicitly that he wouldn’t let her fall… It’s honestly a miracle he never kissed her in the millions of times they practiced it, whether in front of coaches and teammates or in the privacy of their own practice sessions.

Clarke played it off well enough that most audiences might not know he’d gone off book, but _she_ knows. And Kane knows. And Bellamy knows that he won’t be able to keep his feelings for her under wraps much longer.

“I’m pretty sure that’s about to be giffed about six thousand times,” he tells her, rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to be able to look at my Twitter for weeks.“

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she teases, slipping her arms into a light jacket (that he’s pretty sure used to belong to him, back before he filled out) and shooting him a smile.

“Yeah, I’m devastated,” he snorts. “Sorry if it made you uncomfortable. I just got– caught up in the moment, I guess.” He offers her a wry smile. “At least it’s good for our brand.”

If he didn’t know her quite so well, he might miss the way her expression slips. The flicker of something unreadable on her face before the camera-ready smile gets arranged in its place.

“Just don’t try it with any of the really provocative lifts,” she says, pausing with her fingers on the door handle. The warmth of her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “We don’t want NBC to cut our air time because we strayed a little too far from PG-13.”

“I promise I won’t kiss you anywhere they couldn’t put on camera,” he jokes, moving as if to follow her out. Clarke stays still, lets him approach until he looms almost awkwardly close, her gaze so calculating he feels like she can see right through him.

He cocks his head toward the exit, knowing there are dozens of press and friends and family waiting for them.

“Shall we?”

“Yeah.” She looks away. “Let’s go.”

Even with her back toward him, a swarm of people demanding their attention, he feels as if something has shifted between them. And not in the way he’d like for it to.

* * *

After his slip-up on the ice (not to mention the much bigger misstep afterward, for reasons he can’t suss out), Bellamy finds himself playing a dangerous game.

Clarke reaches for his hand under the table at their press conference, a move which does not escape the watchful eyes of the press who want to milk the will-they-won’t-they story. He’s so distracted trying to figure out her motives that he slips up on a question about their training habits, insinuating things about their relationship he might have been able to steer away from otherwise.

In evening practice, he would swear her touches linger more than usual, lighting up his skin until he has to take a very cold shower afterwards. But he’s the one who puts his hand too low on one of the lifts, drawing dangerously near to somewhere NBC _couldn’t_  put on family television.

They go to watch the men’s hockey game together the next day, Clarke nestling into his side and throwing adoring looks his way that leave him flabbergasted. 

“You ever wish you’d played hockey?” She asks at one point, propping her chin on his shoulder.

“Only when my partner is getting on my nerves,” he teases, pretending that the way she ducks her head on a laugh doesn’t set his stomach aflutter. “You ever regret quitting singles?”

“I did for a while.”

“When I pissed you off all the time?”

“Nah.” She bumps his shoulder with her own. “I was only pissed because I could see how good we were together. The only time I thought about going back to singles was before I found you. Back when I didn’t think there was anyone who was as intense as I was, but could also pull me out of my head when I needed it.”

Bellamy swallows. “The only time I regretted not playing hockey was when those judges at nationals our first year took points off that I thought were totally unjustified–”

“They were right,” she says, amused. “My landings were sloppy.”

“–and I couldn’t challenge them to a fistfight right there on the ice.”

Clarke laughs again, her temple falling against his shoulder. He has to fight the sudden urge to kiss her hair.

“I know the feeling. Back in those days when Ontari talked nothing but shit about you, I was about one dirty look away from throwing down.”

Bellamy grins, his gaze directed toward the hockey but his mind not absorbing the game before them.

“Ready to defend my honor, huh?”

Clarke grins and kisses his cheek. “And you were ready to defend mine.”

His jaw falls open just far enough for the camera on them to capture it, which he knows because Miller tags him in literally every tweet he sees about it for the next hour. (But he’s the one who set up Google alerts for Bellamy’s name, because he loves him, so he sort of played himself.)

He doesn’t remember, later, what exactly he said in the wake of the kiss. What he does think, later, is to wonder whether Clarke knew the cameras were on them. 

Whether she was just making her next move in whatever this weird game between them is.

Because it _is_  a game. For whatever reason, Clarke is deliberately stepping up their act in public. Fueling the rumors of their off-ice relationship. Working him up into a disoriented, slightly turned-on frenzy every time she has any excuse to run her fingers down his arm, or whisper so close that her lips brush his ear.

It’s sort of like a game of chicken, only chicken has a clear way to win. Either way Bellamy looks at it, he loses. 

If he doesn’t veer out of the way, seeing this stupid challenge through until the two of them collide, he’ll have to live forever with the knowledge of what it was like to have Clarke. What she likes when she kisses, what she’s like in bed. And then he’d have to live with that knowledge, coupled with the certainty that it would be all he ever got of her.

On the other hand, if he breaks first, he knows he’ll have forfeited more than the game.

She’s already at the rink when he shows up for practice that afternoon, forty minutes before they agreed to meet Marcus. He takes a couple of warm-up laps before skating out to the middle where she’s running through the twizzles from their long program.

He falls into step with her as effortlessly as ever, just in time to catch her hand as she launches into the next part of the routine. Skating with Clarke has always felt a little bit like magic. Even when they were battling each other at every turn, he’d never been so in sync with someone. Never felt so completely and totally on the same page.

By that same instinct, when he helps her down out of one of their lifts that toes the line between PG-13 and rated R, her eyes flicker up to meet his. Their gazes lock, and even though the choreography dictates she pull away, she does not relinquish her grip. They glide across the ice, chests heaving together, neither of them willing to be the first to drop their gaze.

She tightens her hold. Tilts her face toward his.

Bellamy stills her with a hand on her waist.

“Clarke,” he says, hoarse. 

Her lip trembles. He puts on the brakes, loosening his hold.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tearing away from him.

In a split-second decision, Bellamy makes the only move he can. He grabs her hand, tugging her back into his arms and into a kiss as passionate a plea as any words he could have strung together.

She gasps but presses closer until her body is flush against his. Bellamy can’t decide whether it’s his entire world that’s spinning, or if they’re actually drifting in circles on the ice.

It’s both, as he finds out when she simultaneously pulls back and halts them in their tracks.

For a beat, they just stare at each other, each trying to comprehend what just happened.

“There aren’t any cameras,” Clarke says at last, breathless.

Bellamy feels his jaw clench with nervousness.

“I know.”  
  
Her peal of laughter cracks bright and brief across the ice before she flings herself at him, getting her arms around his shoulders and her tongue in his mouth before he even realizes what’s happening.

By the time Marcus shows up for practice they’re both red-faced and grinning. Bellamy doubts they’ll be able to keep it under wraps for long, not now that he knows he can kiss her anytime he wants, but he can’t worry about that now.

For now, they’ve got a medal to win. And lots of lost time to make up for.

“I know I said to tone it down before, but after seeing the judges’ reaction to your last skate, I want you guys to really lean into the sexual tension,” Marcus tells them, crossing his arms as he surveys them with a calculating glance. “You think you can handle that?”

“Oh, yeah.”  Clarke tosses Bellamy a smirk, which he returns in equal measure. “I think we can handle it.”


End file.
